Gas fired radiant tube heaters have become a commercially popular method for providing heat in larger commercial buildings where conventional convective and forced air gas heating systems cannot be implemented efficiently.
For example larger buildings may have doors, such as service bays, which are constantly being opened and closed resulting in large amounts of air being exchanged constantly throughout the day. Heating these types of buildings using conventional forced air gas or convective type heating systems results in large inefficiencies.
Under these circumstances radiant heating is the preferred method of providing heat to the building and often the choice is to use gas-fired radiant tube heaters to provide the necessary radiant heating.
Gas-fired radiant tube heaters have been in commercial use for quite some time now however very little attention has been directed to the radiant efficiency of the heat emission from the heater as well as the total thermal efficiency of the heater. Maximizing the radiant and thermal efficiency of the heater will minimize the operating cost of the system and therefore it is desirable to optimize both the radiant efficiency as well as the thermal efficiency of gas-fired radiant tube heaters.
It is an object of the present concept to improve the radiant efficiency as well as the thermal efficiency of gas fired radiant tube heaters.